I saw a scene with a French poilu one day in the Street of the Three Pebbles, during those battles of the Somme, when the French troops were fighting on our right from Maricourt southward toward Roye. It was like a scene from Gaspard . The poilu was a middle-aged man, and very drunk on some foul spirit which he had bought in a low café down by the river. In the High Street he was noisy, and cursed God for having allowed the war to happen, and the French government for having sentenced him and all poor sacré poilus to rot to death in the trenches, away from their wives and children, without a thought for them; and nothing but treachery in Paris:
“ Nous sommes trahis! ” said the man, raising his arms. “For the hundredth time France is betrayed.”